The peer-reviewed journal eLife announced yesterday (October 20) that it will be doing away with the long-held practice of accepting or rejecting scientific manuscripts that are submitted for publication. Last year, the journal began exclusively reviewing papers that had already been posted as preprints.

Now before we go any further, it's important to note that eLife is not a predatory journal—you know, the journals that publish anything, even nonsense papers about “weird” birds and “the educational value of high school students driving into the desert and making drugs.”

eLife is a not-for-profit, peer-reviewed, open access, science publisher for the biomedical and life sciences. It was established at the end of 2012 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust, following a workshop held in 2010 at the Janelia Farm Research Campus.

The journal plans to charge US$2,000 for the process of arranging review on submissions; previously, its open-access publication fee was $3,000. Some eLife editors are fully on board with the new system.